As I was glancing through the latest addition of Athletic Business, I found this story on a conference in New Jersey realigning one of their "super" conferences by the "athletic talent of teams in a given sport."
So a school that is a traditional powerhouse in football would play in the top division, but if its boys' volleyball team isn't so hot, it would be relegated to the bottom of the barrel.
Quite a difference from the traditional methods of geography or enrollment, which the YAIAA used in Jan. 2008 during its realignment.
Although the YAIAA athletic directors passed the resolution, York Catholic made no qualms about its objections. Here's what principal George Andrews had to say:
Some officials mumbled, barely audible during the role-call votes. York Catholic principal George Andrews made sure he spoke loud and clear.
Delivering the only "no" votes during Monday afternoon's YAIAA winter league meeting at York Suburban High School, Andrews made it abundantly clear that support for the league realignment and schedules over the next two-year cycle was not unanimous. The schedules for all YAIAA sports still passed with ease, as expected. They feature several realignments, as the committee chairs for the 13 league sports adjusted to the new league policy to organize divisions strictly by enrollment.
With York Catholic in the bottom three of the league's 22 schools in enrollment size for boys and girls, committee chairs had little choice but to place it in the lowest division for every sport.
Andrews, who said York Catholic fought against the policy of aligning strictly by enrollment, wanted his continued dissatisfaction recorded.
"In any kind of organization, the right to dissent and the voice of dissent needs to be heard at all times," said Andrews, who objected to the schedules for boys' and girls' basketball, football and golf but voted "yes" for all of the others.
"We feel obligated to stand by what's best for our students," Andrews said. "Obviously, we got outvoted today.
"A great part of this league was having games with a full gym against rival schools. That's not going to exist any more. Bigger schools don't want to play us, probably relating to the reason that they don't always win."
One of the New Jersey ADs offered up his thoughts on the topic:
"I'm not going to say that we're revolutionizing scheduling," says Nutley AD Joe Piro, one of the driving forces behind the SEC's four-division structure, which was finalized in June. "I think what we did do, though, was embrace change. We recognized that there was a competitive imbalance, not only between public and private schools but within some of the public school programs."
So more than a year and a half later, what are your thoughts?
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